This invention provides a high-density disk storage and retrieval cylinder that occupies minimal floor space. By combining overlapping spiral storage within a storage cylinder with motorized positioning and electronic control circuits, it may serve as a disk vending or rental machine or as a general-purpose disk storage and retrieval machine.
Movies stored on DVDs are a popular source of entertainment. One rents them from a variety of locations by simply charging the transaction to a bankcard. In this manner, a customer may enjoy a movie of his choice for a modest fee and return it at his convenience. Owners of such kiosks often locate their units in grocery stores, fast food restaurants, or any place frequented by large numbers of people. Customers enjoy the convenience of renting a movie of their choice, and storeowners appreciate the additional traffic. It's a win-win situation for both customers and proprietors. The only drawback to the customer is the possibility of not finding the desired movie. To the storeowner, the only problem with such kiosks is the occupied floor area—floor area that might be used for additional sales products. This invention solves both problems.
Typically, DVD kiosks hold between 200 and 700 DVDs. Since customers rent the most popular movies first, late customers often must forego seeing the movie of their choice. This invention stores approximately 2400 DVDs, thus greatly decreasing the risk of not having a customer's movie selection. Further, with floor space at a premium, this invention provides additional storage without decreasing floor space for other sales items.
Reliability is another important factor in DVD sales and rentals. When a kiosk is not operational, no sales occur. Since reliability increases as the number of moving parts decrease, this invention with fewer parts should be more reliable and cost effective. Most kiosks use a complex mechanical procedure to move a disk from its storage area to a single location for customer access. This invention moves the access slot to the disk location, eliminating much of the mechanical access and retrieval hardware. By allowing customers to remove the disk manually, this invention simplifies access and retrieval, lowers manufacturing costs, and decreases mechanical failures.